Humboldt: Costs mounting in phone and internet vandalism as Suddenlink struggles to restore service for 4th time

Areas of Arcata and McKinleyville that had been restored went down again around 9 p.m.

An Arcata customer reported that a Suddenlink representative said it was part of the process of restoring the outage that service would be up and down.

A Suddenlink official said earlier this evening that nearly all customers affected by an outage caused by vandalism have had their service restored.

Suddenlink Operations Manager Wendy Purnell wrote in an email to the Times-Standard that services were expected to be restored to most -- if not all customers -- this evening.

Earlier today, Purnell said 95 percent of the 10,000 customers left without service in Bayside, Big Lagoon, Trinidad, Blue Lake, McKinleyville, Fieldbrook, Ferndale and parts of Arcata were back up.

"We have every available resource working around the clock to restore services and assist the sheriff's department in its efforts to catch the responsible parties and put a stop to these senseless, thoughtless acts of vandalism," Purnell wrote.

Damage totals for the four Suddenlink outages caused by vandalism over the last week are estimated at more than $50,000, officials said.

Wednesday night around 11 p.m., someone broke into an underground vault on Old Arcata Road, cut lengths of fiber optic cable and discarded them at the scene. The previous attacks took place in Ferndale and Trinidad.

A Humboldt County Sheriff's Office official said late today that there was no new information to report, and the investigation is continuing.